NIMRODS ITCH LAUNCH! First Devlog + New Shotgun Chassis!

Hey all! 

We’re beyond excited to be sharing NIMRODS with you. 

We fixed up some of the most glaring bugs and balance issues that have been reported, but we’ll get to the lion’s share of them next week. If your favorite bug isn’t mentioned in the patch notes below, don’t despair; we’ve got our eye on about ninety bugs right now, and yours is probably on the list! If you want to make sure, you’re welcome to contact us on our discord, fill out our feedback survey, or comment here or on the game’s main page! This project is still small enough that we read and discuss every piece of feedback internally, so don’t be afraid to speak up!

For this week, there are three major changes. The first is the release of the shotgun!

While in the full game, the assault rifle will probably be the first unlock-able weapon, for the itch demo, we thought it important to show how the choice of weapon chassis can drastically affect the game! The shotgun only has three ammo, which it chews through fairly fast, but a long reload time. Those of you who have come to rely on the hellspitter may find their favorite builds don’t work as well with this new chassis. In addition, the shotgun has high damage but high damage falloff from range, making it deadly up close but suffer at range, meaning even with a good build, you may find a much more aggressive play style may be necessary to succeed...

The next major change is an overhaul on Ability Damage. Some of you may have noticed that anything that dealt blue damage could be a little game-breaking. (Glares at Hemolytic Bullets). An embarrassing math error was causing us to drastically overestimate how much power we needed to give these weapons. We’ve cut the power of these augments to bring them in line with the power of other augments, which may be disappointing to those who have discovered the horror of the hellspitter-plus-freeze build or the hemolytic-plus... pretty-much-anything-build. We’re reducing the boss HP to partially compensate.

Finally, we’re locking underbarrels behind some research now. It was always intended that you only start with three of your four augment slots, but we’d intended to the addon slot to be the locked one, because the very name addon makes it sound, y’know, optional. Not needed. But a bug made it so that you could unlock the addons without the addon research (which some of you unlocked anyway, amusingly.) And we’re glad it did; the gyroscopic harness and the ammo belt were indispensable for new players. But you know what was dispensable? Underbarrels. Many players never used them, or never valued them. Making the underbarrel slot cost research will not only shield new players from that complexity but also make them seem more valuable for players who get far enough in the game to unlock them, which might incentivize their use. To make underbarrels easier to get, we’re reducing the research requirements for orange, cyan, chartreuse, and purple research.

And now, without further ado, here’s the complete patch notes:

Patch Notes

New Content:

• Shotgun Chassis added!
• 9 base damage, decreasing to 2.25 at max range.
• 5 Projectiles per round
• Each projectile penetrates one target to hit a second.
• 1.25 rounds per second
• 3 rounds in Magazine
• 1.5 second base reload time
• 52.5 foot range
• Difficulty: More challenging than pistol.
• Cost: 5 green research, 10 credits.

Bug Fixes:

• Yellow text above research titles removed.
• Fixed Issue where you can select augments from locked slots.
• Weapon colliders adjusted to better match their graphics.
• Settings button autosizes correctly.
• Reload Speed how correctly shows Reload Speed instead of its evil multiplicatively inverted twin, Reload Delay.
• Drones now fire their primary weapon correctly, even if they are equipped with a reciprocal reloader, instead of dropping out of the sky and only firing their underbarrels.
• You can now actually get cyan research.
• Defense Foregrip Tier 3 now no longer crashes the game when you kill an enemy.
• Orange research now correctly based on bonus move speed instead of on armor. Constant adjusted.
• Players can now walk behind the target dummy without getting caught on an invisible barrier.
• Fixes for glitchy crosshairs.

Balance Changes:

• Addon slot unlocked by default, Underbarrel slot locked by default.
• Boss damage increased from 20 to 50.
• Boss HP reduced by about one third.
• Tier 3 Vacuum Grip’s Adrenal Vacuum Passive set to be equal to its Tier 2 version instead of insanely superior. (This is a bug fix.)
• Drone cooldown reduced to 30 seconds instead of being based on the magazine capacity, reload speed, and fire speed of the drone. (This is a bugfix.)
• Drones limited to three charges per run.
• Hemolytic bullets can no longer hit the same enemy twice in one frame. (This is a bug fix.)
• Dash cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
• You can no longer get over 100% research speed on a gun.
• Character’s hitbox reduced slightly. Enemies can touch his hair without hurting him.
• You can shoot through walls to hit fliers flying outside the map. Their XP is dropped at the closest point to the wall.
• Research Changes:
  • All advanced research costs 40 of the two constituent researches instead of 90.
  • Known issue: Addon Researches cost advanced research and underbarrel researches cost basic research. This will be fixed next version.
• Ability Damage Overhaul:
  • Enchanted Bayonet:
    • Kills per Charge: Increased from 16 to 24
    • Blade Damage: Reduced from 31.5% AP to 28% AP
    • Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage bonuses increased from 7% to 9%.
    • Damage bonus increased from x1.07 to x1.09
  • Sharpened Bayonet:
    • Kills Per Charge: Increased from 14 to 21
    • Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage bonuses decreased from 13% to 11%.
    • Damage bonus decreased from x1.12 to x1.1
  • Blade of Light:
    • Kills per charge: Increased from 12 to 20
    • Sword Damage bonus decreased from x1.17 to x1.05
    • Fired Blade AP damage decreased from 25% to 15%.
    • Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage bonuses increased from 10% to 13%.
    • Damage bonus increased from x1.08 to x1.1
  • Magitech Bayonet:
    • Kills per charge: Increased from 6 to 21
    • Damage bonus from passive decreased from 45% to 25%
    • Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage bonus of 2% each.
    • Blade Damage: Increased from 24% AP to 31.5% AP
  • Flamethrower:
    • Projectile Damage increased from x1.15 to x1.19
    • Flame damage decreased from 35% AP to 22% AP
  • Compressed Flamethrower:
    • Projectile Damage Bonus reduced from x1.35 to x1.3
    • Flame Damage bonus increased from +0% to +5%
  • Inferno Cannon:
    • Projectile Damage Bonus reduced from x1.33 to x1.29
    • Flame Damage reduced from 25% AP to 11.5% AP
  • Immolative Emitter:
    • Projectile Damage bonus increased from x1.2 to x1.25 (Known issue: This is noted incorrectly as “Rate of Fire”)
    • Rate of Fire Bonus added: x1.1
    • Charge generation rate decreased from 3.5/sec to 3.05/sec
  • Grenade Launcher:
    • Damage Bonus and Reload Speed bonus increased from x1.1 to x1.14
    • Damage reduced from 30% AP to 13% AP
    • Blast radius changed from 2.75 meters to 7.5 feet. (Noted issue: Due to a confusion between radius and diameter, this is listed as 15 feet. 7.5 feet is the correct number.)
  • Blast Grenades:
    • Damage Bonus and Reload Speed bonus increased from x1.18 to x1.21
    • Damage reduced from 40% AP to 17% AP
  • Elemental Grenades:
    • Damage Bonus and Reload Speed bonus increased from x1.2 to x1.23
  • Shrapnel Grenades:
    • Amount of Shrapnel lowered from 20 to 8.
    • Damage from Shrapnel lowered from 20% AP to 6.5% AP
  • Hemolytic Magazine:
    • On-hit damage decreased from 15% AP to 7.7% AP
  • Vampiric Bullets:
    • On-kill healing reduced from 1/4th an HP to 1/8th an HP.
    • Damage and Reload Speed bonus removed. (Leaving it the same as Bloody Bullets)
  • Bloodshot:
    • Damage Bonus lowered from x1.15 to x1.12
    • Reload Speed Bonus increased from x1.14 to x1.25
  • Apply Nanotech Minor Upgrade:
    • AP given increased from 20% to 30%
  • Level progression:
    • AP per level increased about 25%

Cosmetic Changes:

• “Bond With Gun” minor upgrade reflavored to “Engrave Hemolytic channels".
• Gun chassis sort order changed on the chassis selection page
• Projectile Split amount, being unique to the splitter magazine, was removed from the stats screen so as to not clutter it.
• The gun upgrade screen will not show you Tier 3 Augments you have not yet researched in the “next” box at the bottom.
• Health bars revealed by scanning foregrip Tier 2 now made thinner.
• Player health bar removed from the bottom of the screen. (The one directly under your character is still there.)

Thanks for reading! (Or skipping to the bottom. Whichever.) Next week, in addition to bug fixes and follow-ons to the AP rework, we’ll be unveiling a brand new Augment line. It’ll be a blast!